Pages

Remember, None Of Us Take To Losing Well

Thursday, December 09, 2010

This video reminds me of an incident when my children were young. For the second NBA final in a row, Micheal Jordan had ripped our hearts out, leaving Jazz fans heartbroken and forlorn. One of my sons was just beside himself. I think he decided then that he hated Mr. Jordan and he was going to quit watching the NBA.

This poor kid just had the hated Raiders1 beat his beloved Chargers.

Wow. Poor kid. His parents posted the following on their YouTube page:

Aidan does not take the Chargers losing to the Raiders very well. (Please note: Aidan is an outstanding child and is a kindergartner. He really doesn't hate anything and is full of love. He had been camping all weekend, ran an obstacle course with Marines that am, and was extremely tired. He had a nice nap afterward.)

I am sure there will be the inevitable blowback about how putting this on the internet is bad for the kid and the cries of "what are the parents thinking". Then the deeper discussions of whether it's good for a child's psyche to exposed to this kind of trauma.

I don't have a horse in this race, but I will say this, we don't always win. When our favorite team loses, we feel just like Aidan. We just express it differently2. For what it's worth Aidan, I hate the Raiders, too.

1.) If you are not a lifelong denizen of the AFC West, you probably don't understand just how hated the Raiders are. I mean, nobody but their fans like them in the NFL. For the last decade they have been one of the worst teams in the NFL, which we all felt was cold justice for the silver and black (the only losing team that breaks my heart is the poor Detroit Lions. So sad.). Somehow they would still get up for conference games and pull out the odd win against other AFC West teams. I think they only city outside of the AFC West that carries this kind of angst against the Raiders is Pittsburgh and The Steelers.

2.) Some of us do. I have made the occasional acquaintance who reacted to losing as a personal affront. While they didn't cry, any amount of teasing about their team's loss could result in getting punched.